Jason K. Allen, a Mobile native who is president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, posted a blog entry Thursday listing three reasons why his sons, 6 and 8, won’t be playing football this year.

1. The time commitment was too much.

2. The corrupting influence seemed too intense.

3. Boys would be tackling girls.

By late afternoon, the blog entry had been shared on Facebook 1,691 times and tweeted 825 times.

“From childhood, I’ve had a love affair with sports,” wrote the father of five, who grew up in Mobile and played basketball at Spring Hill College. “As a boy, I memorized the movie “Hoosiers,” idolized Larry Bird, and religiously practiced Pistol Pete’s instructional videos.”

Still, he said, he decided not to allow his sons to play football, and it wasn’t because of the violence sometimes associated with the sport.

In the blog, Allen said the time commitment would have meant that he or his wife would have been out of the house almost seven days a week. He was also troubled by the words and actions of the team leaders and the “general tenor of the league.”

The third reason was a combination of the league being co-ed and pro-tackle, which meant that the boys would be tackling girls. “I’m more concerned about what tackling girls might do to my sons,” he wrote. “Our children are confronted with enough gender confusion without it being introduced on the gridiron."

Allen, reached by phone, said that 95 percent of the response has been positive. Some critics complained that he was anti-sports or old-fashioned, he said.